Addisyn Madeen
Emma Narvaez
The expectation to give back during the holiday season is one we often feel pressured to give in to and can sometimes lead to overspending and unrealistic expectations of what the “perfect” holiday should look like. However, this holiday season, Saint Maur focused on contributing to the better good and put their efforts towards initiating as many as 11 charities that serve to benefit important causes, some ranging outside the holiday season theme. Each charity proved to be successful and raised awareness for their differing causes.
The high school charities consisted of:
Candy Cane Grams Project
A charitable event run every year across the KPASS district is the Candy Cane Grams project, run by the HSSC. “This charity is a common thing international schools do in Japan and it’s something we do every year as well, so it’s a tradition the student council wanted to continue,” Ryo (G12) said. The proceeds made from selling the candy canes were donated to Second Harvest, which is a non-profit organization that uses the money to buy food that would have been thrown away and gives it out to the homeless and others who don’t have food. Ryo said a difficulty that arose from this project is that “we don’t have enough candy canes because people are buying more than expected,” but on the bright side, a success from this is that “we’re selling more than we expected, so that’s nice.”
Joy On Christmas
Another Christmas charity that was run is called Joy On Christmas, initiated by Rin, Carol, Koyuki, and Erin (G11) that collects money through selling a variety of sweets and is then put towards Saint Maur’s charity project called “The Happy Bag”. “We ended up buying goods that they were missing such as toothbrushes, tooth pastes, heat tech, and gloves,” Rin said. The initiators of the Joy On Christmas charity found it simple to organize this project, as it is a simple concept. However, stabilizing the sales throughout was more difficult to manage. “At the start, everyone came to buy, but after the first week there were less and less people coming to buy so we ended up lowering the price in the last week of our project. This was successful!”, Rin exclaimed. The Joy On Christmas project exceeded the original goal of ¥25,000 with their funds amounting to ¥29,000 with the help of Saint Maur students and faculty.
Christmas Toy Drive
Finally, a third Christmas themed charity was the annual Christmas Toy Drive, run by Rei and Yura (G11). The two students wanted to continue this charity because “…we had always had an interest and had participated in this charity for the last 2 years and we wanted to continue this great tradition of love and generosity…,” Rei explained. The gifts donated through this drive were given directly to the children at Koufu Orphanage in Honmoku, ranging from preschoolers to high schoolers. One difficulty that occurred throughout this charity was the allocation of donors to children, as “it was challenging at times to organize gathering gifts or donations due to unexpected shipping delays or Covid issues, and re-planning and coming up with compromises was really difficult.”
Although Rei and Yura were unable to meet all of the expected children due to Covid cases, they were still able to meet a couple of children and involved over 60 students and faculty in their project through gift or monetary donations.
Period Drive
As mentioned previously, there were also charities that did not revolve around the holiday season. For example, the Period Drive run by Sarah (G11) served to provide sanitary products for girls throughout Saint Maur. Sarah said she wanted to institute this project because “…many people asked if it would be possible and we also knew that a lot of other schools were doing it too!” She also stated that “…advertising was the most difficult…” but the drive was carried out successfully, as there have been “so many positive comments from both the students and teachers!” Throughout this project, Sarah explained that “the admin was super cooperative and kind.” The original pad dispensers were established by a previous Student Council but Sarah’s goal was to make the products free, so she’s currently trying to repurpose them.
Afghanistan Charity
Finally, the last high school charity executed this holiday season is the Afghanistan Charity run by Jessica and Shikoh (G12). This charity collects money by selling folders with a culturally significant Afghanistan art design. Jessica explained that she wanted to launch this charity because “…right now in Afghanistan, women are banned from going to school beyond the third grade and it is important that we raise awareness of this fact, as many people around the world, especially women, do not share these privileges that we take for granted.” It was somewhat of a difficult journey for Jessica and Shikoh to carry through with this project, as they had lost contact with their original contact person who would collect the money when the Taliban took over. Despite their difficulties along with further distributing management issues, the Afghanistan Charity was able to send around 100,000 yen to UNICEF raised from folder revenue and other monetary donations. Jessica stated “I believe we have had massive success in raising awareness for the issue in Afghanistan — not just about women, but about the state of the country at the moment. With our school emphasizing the value of global citizenship, I thought it was a very important step we took in the school community to help call attention to this issue.”
If you counted, that doesn’t acknowledge the five other charities run by the middle school student council, elementary school student council, and even the teachers. The Middle School Student Council represented by the presidents in the grades six (Kao), seven (Luna), and eight (Mikoto) presented the school with the chance to donate by playing a fun guessing game. The charity was centered around two well-sized plastic bins that were filled to the brim with snacks and the objective was to guess how many snacks were actually inside. Each guess cost 50 yen, not a pricey game to join in on, and all the proceeds were going towards Yokohama Circular Foodbank. The aim of this charity stated by Mikoto, the eighth grade president, was to remind everyone the real meaning of the holidays is to appreciate what we have and to give back instead of focusing on what we receive. While the charity had a slow start, after advertising it more they started to have great success, even receiving a 20,000 yen donation by a single student. They just got themselves 400 guesses! As the middle school student council started to explain more about their charity, it also became increasingly obvious that this experience was one that would stick with them for a lifetime.
Of course, we cannot forget about the amazing work that the Elementary Student Council did for our friends in Kannai. The elementary school student council is presented with the option of multiple charities and organizations and this year the top choices were the Service Learning Club and the Kokrobite Chiltern Centre, which supports families in Ghana to enable children to gain an education. To raise money for the children’s center, the students were asked to pay 100 yen to participate in the Halloween Game Show where they all dressed up and participated in fun games. They even ended the day by going trick-or-treating while the various high school classes handed out candy for them to enjoy. This wasn’t all they did, they asked every class to paint as many christmas cards as they pleased (even quite a few teachers joined in) and the best one was picked from every homeroom. After they had all picked their favorites, they were packed up as a set and then were sold to the students to use to send any holiday-themed letters. And last but not least, all the students were sent home with a large brown paper bag and were asked to fill it up with items to donate: food, socks, warm clothes, etc. They were also allowed to decorate their bags so as to give our friends their extra nice gifts, in extra nice packaging. Due to how the teachers were able to communicate well with the cooperative parents, it was a huge success and definitely made this holiday one to remember. That is not all that the teachers did, there was also a “Giving Tree” set up in front of the cafeteria with ornaments stating exactly what is needed to be donated. This being the second annual “Giving Tree”, needless to say, it worked great and hopefully it will continue to in the upcoming years.
Saint Maur celebrated this holiday season with generosity and gratitude across elementary, middle, and high school. Thank you to everyone who initiated and contributed to these charities, every donation makes a difference!
Addisyn Madeen & Emma Narvaez